


Conditioned

by LananiA3O



Category: Darksiders (Video Games)
Genre: Black OC, Non-Binary OC, OC: Sam - Freeform, Other, TW: Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 09:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27848846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: After a new arrival in Haven sours the mood of Jones' human companion, Sam, he tries to cheer them up by providing them with something they've been looking for forever: conditioner to tame their curly hair. Unfortunately, the reason for Sam's distrust of the new arrival turns out to be a result of much deeper, more painful wounds than Strife could have imagined.
Relationships: Strife (Darksiders)/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 8





	Conditioned

**Author's Note:**

> A little late, but here is my entry for day 3 of Darksiders Week 2020: OC/reader ship day. The OC in this case is Sam, a non-binary, black survivor who spent quite a bit of time traveling with Jones. This chapter was inspired by four blog posts from tumblr:  
> 1) another-darksiders-blog lamenting the lack of non-binary OCs  
> 2) lyca-and-nero lamenting the lack of POC OCs and wondering what the horsemen's reactions to a black person's hair wash day would be  
> 3) lyca-and-nero wondering what the reaction to a POC dealing with racism would be  
> 4) mehiwilldoitlater imagining an OC braiding the horsemen's hair
> 
> Please note that I am a white-as-paper, cis author, so writing Sam made me go waaaaayyy out of my usual comfort zone. I hope I did them justice and managed to treat their status as an nb POC and all that entailed with the needed respect. I encourage nb/POC readers of this fic to drop feedback either in the comments or in my ask box (anon asks/comments are enabled).
> 
> Disclaimer: This work was written for publication on Archive of Our Own and my personal Tumblr and is not for profit. Any re-publication on for-profit/monetized sites/apps is not authorized or supported by me. If you come across such a re-publication, please leave a comment in my tumblr ask box. Podfics and translations may be authorized upon request.

_It had all started with Aaron_. The thought came into Strife's—Jones' mind just as he blasted the head off another scycophant. Some people had their brightest moments in the shower; Strife usually had them in the middle of battle. He was really no longer surprised.

What was surprising was the conclusion he had arrived at. When Jones had first encountered Aaron—rescued him right from underneath the mandibles of a harvester, really—he had been thrilled to learn that Aaron not only had a gun, but also knew how to use it. And as much as Jones wanted to say that every human life in Haven was worth no more and no less than any other, the simple fact remained that a human who knew how to use a weapon efficiently was likelier to improve everyone's chances for survival. Or at least so he had thought.

They had had the usual introduction, of course. Nice bonfire, some good food—or at least as good as Kanda could make it with scrounged up supplies, some of which consisted of things that had never grown on Earth before the apocalypse and were only deemed safe to put in the pot because one of the humans had already tried them in the desperation of hunger or because the makers verified it as edible. And then of course there had been questions. What's your name? Are you from New York or how did you end up here? Do you know where other survivors might be? Would you like seconds? So what did you do before it started raining demons?

That specific question was when it had all gone south.

 _"I was a cop,"_ Aaron's words echoed in Jones' skull as he dispatched a horde of humans unfortunate enough to have been reanimated by the Destroyer after their untimely demise. The angels called them the Swarm. The demons called them Hellslaves. The humans called them mother, sister, friend, colleague, and that, Strife knew from personal experience, was what ironically made the weakest of enemies the hardest to kill.

_"I was six minutes from the end of my shift when the first meteors came down. Tried to kill as many of them as I could, for all the good it did me. I ran out of bullets pretty damn soon. And then... and then I just ran..."_

The memory only pissed Strife off more and he dropped his glamor for just a moment to ram one of his sabers into a snarling demon minion. To have held on, to have survived for so long after the apocalypse... humans were braver and stronger than anyone gave them credit for... and yet when the time came to tell of that dreadful day, he could always hear the same things in their voice: fear, grief, and regret.

Usually, that also elicited predictable reactions from the others—empathy, compassion, comfort, solidarity. It was those that had impressed Strife the most. There had been little room for them in the nephilim horde, even less among the demons. And if the angels were capable of them, they at least would rather be caught dead than to show them to a nephilim. He remembered all too well how alien it had felt the first time Sam had hugged him, told him how sorry they were for his loss, and promised to be there for him in any way they could. The only thing that could have made him feel more like he had just died and ascended to some alternate plane of reality where things were actually nice was if Death had told him he was proud of him.

Of course, the key word here was 'usually'. Jones grimaced as he shot the last creature that tried to kill him and holstered his guns. Kanda and Ben had behaved as he had expected. Sam and Rick on the other hand...

Sam and Rick had looked at each other in a way that instantly set off every single alarm bell in Jones' brain. The others seemed not to have noticed, but he had been able to all but feel the temperature in the room drop by a few degrees. Sam had tensed up, every muscle clenched, and so had Rick, and if Jones had had any money to bet, he would have bet that the only thing keeping them from actually getting up and walking out right then and there had been good manners and the primordial instinct not to panic in the face of certain danger. The quick look they had shared reminded him of sailors conspiring to mutiny if the captain pulled any more shit and for the rest of the evening, Sam's sentences had put the 'curt' in 'curtail'.

What was even worse was that both Sam and Rick had looked at him as if they wanted him to share in, leaving him to improvise again once more. The quick shrug he had given had apparently done nothing but piss Sam off. They had barely even talked to him since then. And as much as he liked to tell himself that that was okay, even more than okay, since he really wasn't even human to being with, it left him feeling robbed. Of the laughter and tears Sam had shared with him. Of the attention of someone who—in complete unawareness of his status as a lethal enforcer of universal balance—had deemed him someone worthy of both attention and affection.

"Okay. Step one complete—I finally know what exactly made them so pissed off at me," Jones muttered to himself as he started foraging the shattered stores, broken apartments, and surrounding greenery for food. "Now I just need to figure out why."

And oh wasn't that going to be fun! He wasn't a fucking telepath. The idea of just walking up to Sam and asking had occurred to him, of course, but he had pushed it away just as quickly. Usually, those kinds of conversations ended with someone dead or maimed.

It really was moments like these when he became painfully aware that, at the end of the day, his glamor was just that—a disguise, a persona he had conjured up to avoid having everyone either run for the hills or try to murder him on sight, and for all the skill he had acquired over the millennia in faking his way through basic interactions in disguise—'fake it til you make it', as Sam had once said—jargon still got the better of him on the regular. Right now, he felt the answer to his dilemma was hidden in a simple question: what the fuck was so bad about cops?

Jones frowned. He really should have visited Earth more often. The last time he had done so had been more than a century ago and things... human society in general, had been quite different then. According to that dictionary included in Haven's meager, but treasured book collection, cops were enforcers of the law. Serve to protect. What was wrong with that? Sure, they probably had to resort to drastic measures now and then, just as he and his siblings did on a cosmic level, but at the end of the day, if it served to keep law and order, how was that a bad thing? The question had been bothering him for days now, but it was hardly like he could just ask any of the humans in Haven. Chances were they would look at him as if he had grown a second head or a set of horns.

Of course, today's foraging trip yielding only minimal spoils was not exactly helping his mood. How the hell were he and the makers supposed to feed the survivors if there was no food to be found? He couldn't just come back almost empty-handed, but then again, what was he expecting after ten years of survivors looting whatever they could carry, in order to survive however long they could?

 _But hey, if I can't get food_ _..._ Jones paused as he walked past the shelf closest to the door of the shop's storage room he had just checked for food. Perhaps, he did not need food to make them happy today. Worst case scenario, they could still just chuck a kill in on the grill. Kanda might have looked like throwing up when explaining how she had learned years ago that scycophants were edible, but she was not wrong. However, one thing _he_ had learned about humans not too long ago was that one of the most cherished perks of reaching Haven was finally having the chance to get a proper bath again, without having to worry about having their supplies stolen by other survivors or their necks snapped by some lurking demon.

 _'If only we had actual shampoo and shower gel...'_ Sam had lamented once. _'Man, I would kill for a bottle of conditioner.'_

Jones grinned. Granted, he had no idea what exactly was in those brightly-colored bottles right in front of his eyes—what the fuck even was methylchloroisothiazoline?—but he had learned his human letters. "Shampoo, shower gel, detangler, moisturizer, _conditioner_..." Jones set down his backpack and got work. Stacking loot was an art and he was an artiste. He had this in the bag. Literally. "Sammy, I'm about to make your whole damn day..."

***

By the time he returned to Haven, the sun was already setting, earning him a stern, if fake lecture from Ulthane. He almost felt bad for the human survivors watching the performance—judging from the looks on their faces, human empathy was in full play. He also hoped they'd never meet Death. Ulthane's lectures were a shower of praise compared to his.

Even better, Ulthane kept his sermons short. Jones handed over what little food and medical supplies he had been able to scrounge up, then headed up the bridges to the cots. They were simple and not even all that comfortable, yet Jones was hardly surprised that this is where most of the survivors loved to gather. It was warm, clean, safe, and most importantly it resembled even a shred of normality. Normally, this is where he would find Sam, taking a quick nap before the light was gone. After all, old habits die hard, and out in the destroyed city, nighttime had not been a safe time to rest.

This time, Sam was nowhere to be found and he knew exactly why.

"Jones!" Aaron raised his glass in Jones' direction. "Kanda and I were just talking about you. Don't know if you're crazy or brave to go back out there on your own, but I'm sure you could use a drink. Wanna join?"

"Actually, I'm looking for Sam." He tried to keep his tone as light and friendly as possible, but in the back of his mind, Sam's apprehension about Aaron left his alarm bells ringing. They might be human, but they had good instincts. Usually. "Got a present for them."

"I think she—I mean, they, went to wash some clothes." Kanda took a swig from her own cup. "Care to share the surprise?"

"Nope." As much as Jones loved seeing the unbridled glee on human faces whenever he brought back some mundane luxury from his trips, he was not quite sure this one would not trigger an all-out fight. "Maybe later."

The path down to the washing station was slippery as always, but that was to be expected when one channeled a river to flow through a tree. The sound of furious scrubbing reached his ear long before the sound of the water did.

"Careful, Sammy," Jones called out as he rounded the corner to the washing cave, took off the backpack and leaned against the tree. "Gonna scrub a hole in that shirt."

"Wouldn't be the first time I sewed it back together," Sam lobbed back at him, before putting down the washboard and shirt and turning around to him. The long, black braids fell back across their shoulders like thin, fuzzy snakes. They nodded towards the top of the stairs. "Aaron still up there?"

"Yeah."

Sam shrugged. "Back to scrubbing then."

And so they did. Jones sighed. _There really is no way around this conversation is there? U_ nder any other circumstance, talking to anyone else, Strife would not have minded being straight-forward and blunt. He could live with his siblings' disappointment—and had done so for thousands of years—and he could not have cared less if he tried what any makers, angels, demons, or even the other survivors in Haven thought of him. But this? This was Sam, and the thought of accidentally pissing them off and damaging his... relationship with them beyond repair sent a sort of terror into his heart that he hadn't felt in eons. 

Even worse, if he misstepped here even once, if he picked even a single wrong word, he might accidentally give away that he was not who he was pretending to be. _No pressure. At all._

As if they had been able to read his mind, Sam put down the shirt once more. "Jones... what are you not telling me?"

 _Play, dumb, Jones, play dumb_. "What am I not telling who?" _Okay, not that dumb._

"You're hiding something from me." Sam frowned. It made them look tired and sad and that alone was enough to piss him off. "You ain't talked to me in days now. You've been takin' every single patrol. I'm getting worried. Seriously. Did I say something to piss you off?"

"What? No!" The words actually stung as they bounced around his skull. "No, dear god, no, I just... well..." _Well what now, Strife?_ He rolled his eyes. What was that human idiom? 'Already got your hands dirty?' "I thought _you_ were pissed off at _me_ ," Jones explained with a shrug. "You know... because I was being all chum with Aaron the other day."

"Well yeah." Sam rolled their eyes. "That did actually piss me off. Still does a little, now that you mention it. I don't know how you can—I mean, you're black, too. You know—ah, nevermind."

Sam turned back to washboard. Jones frowned. Well. This conversation could hardly get worse now, could it?

"Well, either way, I got something for ya." He picked the bag up, sat down next to Sam, and placed the bag between them. "Peace offering. Sorta. Found it and thought of you."

It got their attention at least, but the usual excitement was gone. Sam sighed, put down the board and shirt, and opened the bag.

The sound that escaped from their mouth was barely human. Halfway between a shrill shriek and a breathless gasp, it was thankfully small enough to be swallowed by the tree, yet Jones was sure it would leave a ringing in his ear. Sam looked up at him, back at the bag, back at him. Rinse and repeat four times, almost as if they believed the bag would disappear if they looked away too long.

"No way!"

"Yes way."

"I'm hallucinating."

"You're not."

"What the fuck did Kanda put in them mushrooms she served for lunch..."

"Something delicious, I'm sure." Jones grinned.

At last, Sam unfroze from the pose of sheer surprise they had been stuck in and reached into the bag gingerly. "Shampoo... detangler?! You found fucking detangler? WHAT?!"

"Ten years old detangler." Jones corrected. "Not sure if any of this stuff is still any good."

Sam laughed and dear lords of Hell, it felt good to hear that sound again. "Honestly, I'm pretty sure there's enough chemicals in there to make it survive a century. Those 'best before' dates are more guidelines than actual rules." The journey through the bag continued. One by one, Sam retrieved the little bottles, holding them like small treasures of infinite worth into the sinking sun.

Then, at long last, they reached the last bottle.

"EX-FUCKING-CUSE ME, WHAT??!!!" This time, their hands wrapped around the bottle tightly, kissing it and hugging it tight enough to their chest to convince Jones that even those creepy, greedy little demon kids he had encountered in the Nether couldn't have pried it from them. "Conditioner... You got me conditioner... oh my god imma cry..."

 _Oh no._ "I thought... you'd be happy?"

"Happy?" Sam looked at him, horrified, as if he had just asked them to walk into a harvester nest. "I'm not happy, I'm goddamn ecstatic! This bottle is mine now! Anybody try to take this from me, imma shoot a bitch."

Jones laughed. "Better not tell the others then, bec—"

It happened so fast he was almost sure it hadn't happened at all. Sam all but tackled him, throwing their arms around him and planting frantic kisses against his neck. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Jones, I love you, man!"

"Yeah right..." All he could do was laugh. Sam didn't mean that. It was hyperbole. No-one had ever loved a Horseman. He was pretty sure there was some unwritten rule of the universe that prevented reality from bending that way. "You only say that because you don't know yet what a colossal dumbass I am."

Sam chuckled. "Why? What did you do? Try to wrestle a trauma demon?"

 _That_ , Jones mused, _would actually have been mildy entertaining_. _For about a second. Then it would just have been an unfair fight. For the demon._ "Nah, it's just..." He weasled out of Sam's embrace reluctantly and almost shivered at the sudden loss of warmth and pressure. It was best not to get used to it. Especially not with someone so short-lived. "Sam... There's a question I have to ask you. And it's gonna be a super stupid one, but I know it's gonna keep bothering me until I ask, and it's just gonna make things more awkward if I don't and—"

"Jones... JONES!" Sam's right hand squeezed his left gently. "Take a deep breath, dammit. I don't mind stupid questions. Not as long as you can live with me sitting here for the rest of the night, doing my hair."

"You're kidding, right?" He gave their shoulder a playful poke. "It can't take that long."

They looked at him as if he had just said that rain was salt water and the oceans fresh. "Jones... I have 4A hair, currently in natural box braids, which I've been wearing like this for six months. Six. Whole-ass. Months." Sam shook their head, wetted a fresh wash cloth in the river and started soaking the first braid. "Getting these braids out, detangled, washed, conditioned, sealed, and put back in would take six hours on a good day. Imma be here for a while."

"That sounds like a lot of trouble for something as trivial as hair," Jones mused with a grin. Inside, Strife was horrified. Six hours? For hair? What kind of masochist would willingly do this to themselves? And what the hell was 4A? "Why not just shave?"

"Sha—" Sam's jaw sank in utter disbelief. "Jones, my momma was a hair dresser. If I shave my head, she gon' come back from the dead just to slap me."

It took him almost every ounce of his control to suppress the smirk that wanted to come to his mind at the mental image. Sam hardly talked about their family, but he knew they had been close, and even though six years were much more to a human than they were to nephilim, the few times Sam had talked about their mother, the grief had been as raw and fresh as Strife had ever experienced himself.

"'Your hair is your crown'," Sam whispered softly as they finished untangling the first braid, revealing a mass of black, tangled curls thicker than any wool Jones had ever seen. If that was how much hair went into a single braid, he could only imagine how much there would be once all were undone. Sam twisted it back into a loose tail, then moved on to the next braid, working with fingers so deft, Jones wondered briefly if there was any witchcraft involved.

"That's what mom always used to say. 'Your hair is your crown and you are a quing—don't you ever forget that.'"

"Quing?" Another word he was not familiar with. Great.

"She used to call me 'princess' when I was a kid," Sam explained. "'Queen' after I turned eighteen. Shortly after, I realized that wasn't me. I ain't no queen. Not a king either. Mom just shrugged and said 'quing, then' and that was it."

"When you were eighteen..." He tried to do the math in his head, but Sam did the work for him.

"The year before she died, yeah..." In their eyes, Jones could see the first hint of tears, but just as usual, Sam refused to cry. They were strong like that. Humans. And especially his human. "I know it's a silly word, but... it meant the world to me that she didn't try to pull some sort of 'we're in the middle of the demon apocalypse—do you have to do this gender thing now' crap on me. Not that I think she ever would have. She wasn't that kind of person."

"But you didn't pull that example out of thin air, did you?"

"No."

"They still alive?"

"Nope."

"Too bad." He did feel the distinct urge to punch whoever had insulted Sam like that in the face. Instead, he reached for one of the bottles he had brought along. "So... are you gonna use all of that or can I share some with the others, so they don't come down here trying to steal your conditioner?"

Sam giggled, grabbed the bottle from his hand and examined the ingredients list. Apparently, to them all those strange words made perfect sense. "Well, this one is better for type 1 or 2 hair, so Kanda, Ben and Aaron." They put it back into bag and started going through the rest of them one by one. "That one too. That one's mine. And this. Not this one. Free for all. Absolute mine. And especially this one. Mine mine mine. Well..." They gave him a sheepish grin. "Mine and Rick's, I guess, if he ever decides to let his hair grow out. And yours, I guess?" Sam's eyes narrowed. "You know... I just realized I've never seen you with that hood off. Please don't tell me you shaved your hair like Rick did."

"Of course I didn't." He wanted to slap himself as soon as he had said it. Great. Now he would need to think of how long and disshevelled his hair should look. _Great job, Strife._

"Mind if I have a look?"

 _Yes, I do actually,_ Strife thought to himself. _I have not yet made up my mind of which of the thousand possible looks I'd like._ The idea of simply using his natural look had been tempting, but then again, human hair did not tend to defy gravity like his or Fury's. Still, as close as possible to the real thing was probably best. Jones sighed and pulled back his hood, revealing deep brown strands bound back into the saddest, shortest pony tail ever.

"There. Nothing to write home about."

Sam pulled one of the strands from the braid and ran it between their fingers slowly. "Weird. You've got like... 2A hair. 2B at most. Don't see that a lot in black folks."

"Well..." Jones shrugged and put the hood back on. "I am from a biracial family from the other side of the world, remember?" It was a convenient lie he had spun when Sam had first asked him the usual questions and the best lies were the ones closest to the truth. No-one had to know that the two races were actually separate species and that 'the world' referred to the universe, not the Earth. 'Must have gotten it from my dad's side. Mom was a bitch, but she did have some impressive hair."

Sam laughed, put away the bottles they had claimed for themselves and returned to wetting, undoing and twisting their braids.

"Imma take the rest of this up to the others. Spread the love." Jones grinned, returned the remaining bottles to his backpack, and went back to the living quarters.

***

'Spreading the love' had nearly resulted in mass hysteria. He had to admit, the makers' faces at the sudden commotion around a handful of little white bottles had been priceless. He had stuck around just long enough to help Kanda skin and filet a hellhound Elanya had slain on her patrol for dinner, before returning to Sam.

They had finished undoing and twisting a quarter of their braids. Jones lit the lantern above the stream to make up for the almost vanished sun, then sat back down in his previous spot. "You really weren't kidding when you said this would take hours."

"And this is just the take down and first detangling."

"First?"

Sam sighed. "Well, once this is all done, I'll need to wash my hair. Detangle again. Condition. Seal. Oil scalp. Redo the braids." For the first time since they had received their conditioner, Sam sounded almost daunted at the prospect. "Actually, I think imma leave the re-braiding to tomorrow. Let my curls breath a bit for tonight. Also don't want cramps in my fingers."

"I'll help you with the braids, if you teach me how to do them," Jones offered. Sam raised an eyebrow.

"You've never done box braids?"

"Not a thing in my family. Braids in general actually..."

Jones could not remember them ever having looked so disappointed. "Alright then. Tomorrow I'll teach you how to do box braids. And I can do some cornrows for yours, if you want."

"Cornrows?"

"Cornrows," Sam confirmed. "You know... the ones that look like my braids, but run along the scalp instead of flowing freely. Very good style for short hair. Lasts for a good month or so. Four to five if you freshen them up every once in a while."

Jones laughed. He wondered would his siblings would say, if he was ever to meet them again while still having those braids. Death was not likely to care. Fury and War would probably call it childish.

"Deal."

For the next ten braids, Sam continued their work in silence. By the time Kanda called them for dinner, their hair was half braided, half twisted, and they could not have cared less. Jones watched in amusement as Sammy practically wolfed down their portion before returning to the stream. It must have looked like a ridiculous contrast to his own hesitant eating to everyone else. Even now, three weeks after arriving in Haven, Strife could not quite get over the unfamiliar feeling of guilt whenever he ate the food put in front of him. He was a nephilim. He needed less than a tenth of what sustenance humans required, but there was no way to express that without giving himself away. So here he was. Wasting food on himself that would have been better spent on the others.

Jones sat down next to Sam with a sigh and started picking at his bowl. "So... how's it going?"

"It's going..." Sam finished another twist, picked up a new braid... and dropped it again. "You know what, I am getting sick and tired of dealing with my dehydrated, matted-as-a-mud-fighting-dog hair. How about I get started on your cornrows?"

"Now?"

"No, next year." They rolled their eyes. "Of course now."

"Okay..." Jones took off his hood slowly. "Do you want me to turn around or—"

"Nah." Sam undid the band holding his hair behind his head and ran their fingers through the falling strands. Somehow, even such a ridiculously simple gesture made Strife's heart beat faster. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had played with his hair. He wasn't sure anyone ever had. "Man, your hair's awfully clean."

"Yeah..." He gave a sheepish grin. "Nicked some soap from the salvage before I came back."

"Hey, I don't mind. Saves me a lot of time."

The way Sam worked could only be described as magical. Jones closed his eyes and smiled as he felt them part his hair into neat rows using what Sam had called one of their top three possessions at one point—a rattail comb. The first knot in the braid pinched, almost like getting stung by a mosquito, but the rest he could barely feel. Sam's fingers all but flew across his scalp, picking up one bit of hair after the next and for a brief half hour or so, Jones merely closed his eyes in bliss.

Of course, no good thing ever lasted forever. The world was a dark and terrible place after all.

"Jones... you said you were going to ask me something super stupid earlier. What was it?"

Jones froze. For a moment, he hoped that maybe, against all odds, the ground beneath him would open right up and swallow him whole. "It's nothing, really."

"That's your 'it's something, but I'm afraid of how you'll react' voice," Sam replied. "I promise I won't make fun of you."

"That's not what I'm worried about." It was only half a lie. For once, being made fun of was actually only the third-worst outcome. The top spot was valiantly held by 'you might accidentally find out that I am not actually human'. The second place this time around, was 'you will hate me forever'.

"Jones..." Sam paused their braiding and squeezed his hand gently. "Please just tell me what's bothering you, because clearly something is and I hate seeing you like this. I care about you. Please?"

Jones sighed. Holy Heavens did he not deserve someone as compassionate as the human sitting next to him. "Okay then..." He took a deep breath. "What's so bad about Aaron being a cop?"

The reaction was instantaneous. Sam blinked, twice, then shook their head. "What do you mean 'what's so bad about Aaron being a cop'? He. Is. A. Cop. You should know what that means. You're black, too!"

"Yeah, but I'm not from around here, remember? Where I come from... law enforcement officers may not be popular, but at the end of the day, they're just doing their job." And what a lovely mess the highest order of law enforcement of the universe was making of it at this point! Death was fuck knew where, War was presumed dead, Fury could probably not care less, and Strife... well, here he was, making an ass of himself in front of a human on Earth. "And why would me being black have anything to do with that?"

Sam threw up their hands and muttered something that sounded like it was halfway between a curse and a prayer, before resting their face in their palms. "You're joking, right?"

Jones winced. "I told you it was a stupid question."

For once, he was actually glad to have a full bowl of food. Jones picked up his spoon once more and picked at the stew. Perhaps if he just sat here long enough, blissfully shutting his mouth and eating his food like he should have from the beginning, Sam would be able to ignore that he had even asked that.

"Right... Biracial family from the other side of the world. How would you know what it was like here, before the apocalypse." Sam sighed. "You know about this whole slavery thing that happened in this country some two-hundred years ago?"

Jones froze, spoon in his mouth and food halfway down his gullet. It burned in his throat, but that was hardly his biggest concern at the moment.

Yes. He knew about the whole slavery thing. He had been there, chasing down a rogue changeling demon. Some stupid plantation owner had shouted insults at him and tried to shoot him when he had seen him walking through the cotton fields.

"I heard about it. In history class." Finally, he managed to swallow that spoonful of stew. "But that was a long time ago."

"Yeah, well..." Sam cringed. "We may not have had plantations in 2010 anymore, but we sure had prisons where they make you work for two bucks an hour. We may have had a black president, but he was the first out of forty-fucking-four. When white girls wore box braids to school it was 'cool', when I did it it was against the dress code. When white people grab stuff that falls off a truck, they called it salvage, when black people do it, they called it lootin' and throw your ass in jail, and when my dad called the police because his barber shop was getting robbed, they shot him instead of... you know... the white guy holding him at gun point. Fucking cops kept their badge and my mom got twenty-thousand in settlement. Twenty-thousand fucking dollars!"

For the first time since he had met them, Sam sounded absolutely furious, downright incensed with rage. "That's how much a black guy's life was worth before the apocalypse—twenty-thousand dollars. That's not even a year worth of rent in this city."

Sam took a deep breath and wiped the tears that had burst forth off of their cheeks. They were shivering like a leaf in the wind, although Jones doubted it was from cold.

"So... yeah... slavery might have been dead and illegal before the apocalypse, but I can assure you—racism was alive and well. And I ain't sayin' that I think Aaron's gonna shoot me just 'cos I'm black, and I'm not gonna go off on him or anything, but I ain't trustin' him either. I can't. And if I'll never have to spend a single minute dealing with him, nothing of value will be lost."

Jones nodded. For once, Strife, Rider of the White Horse, endless spirit of timeless unrest and incessant chatterbox extraordinaire was truly lost for words. What could he possibly say to all of that? What should he say? There was not a single reply his brain could come up with that did not ring hollow and cold. Instead, he sat in silence, food growing cold, as Sam finished braiding his hair into neat little beautiful rows and taking down the last of their own braids.

He had been right about one thing at least: they really had an impressively poofy, voluminous, gorgeous crown of hair.


End file.
